Friday, December 28, 2012

Risk 2210 meets 40k

Disclaimer

Avertissement

The publishers of this blog take no responsibility for the resultant injuries and/or deaths from the immense shock and/or confusion readers will likely experience upon reading certain content in this battle report, namely that Mike won a game of 40k.

Risk 2210 meets 40k

Risk 2210 avec 40k

Imagine Risk 2210 combined with 40k. I combined rules from both to create a fully functional, well balanced 3 player 40k ruleset for a festive battle.

The Rules

Les règles

1)Each player needs a 2500 point list.

2)The board is divided with the following deployment zones and objectives:

3)Each player receives 3 reroll tokens to begin the game. These permit participants to either bid (explained below) or to get a free reroll of any dice rolled.

4) Participants must then bid on turn order by secretly selecting the number of tokens they are willing to bid and then by revealing their choice. The player that bids the highest number of tokens gets to play first. However, if there is a tie, those players would roll off against each other. This bidding is repeated at the beginning of each game turn (not player turn), so it is possible to go two turns in a row. Any tokens bid however are lost. Initiative can still be stolen if either player rolls a 6, so despite bidding and losing all their tokens, winning players could still get one-upped by a lucky roll.

5) Participants could gain more reroll tokens each game turn by seizing and holding onto a new objective or by wiping out a unit. This was not cumulative (thus one cannot get 2 reroll tokens for killing two squads, only one). No matter what, players always get one free token each turn to assure everyone can still bid.

6) The game is won by seizing the most objectives. In the event of a tie, the number of tokens left in one's pool becomes the determining factor.

New Strategic Elements

Les nouveaux éléments stratégiques

In traditional games of Capture and Control with two players, ties were very common. The extra objective makes this standoff less likely. In addition, the tokens being a backup determinant of victory further decreases the risk of a tie.

The reroll tokens add a new strategic dimension to the game. Does one save their tokens and go last, or is it better to risk all & try to dominate the other players by going first? Either strategy has its drawbacks and advantages. Going two turns in a row can be brutal, but one must remember that in the event of a tie, the tokens are the final determinant of victory.

Armies & Deployment

Les armées et le déploiement

Mike was playing his space marines with some blood angel allies. He set up in the D1 zone.

Dokclaw plopped his scouts down in a hot zone between Mike's and my deployment zone during his scout move. They immediately attracted Mike's attention. He sent a bunch of assault marines after them but they never made it.

I already had a squad of cultists and plasma plague marines holding the objective. They took the shots the space wolves dealt out and then I outflanked in two more squads of plague marines with my Chaos Lord on Palanquin and Huron.

Unfortunately, it got destroyed soon after. I find it is somewhat comparable to the Drake with the AP3 blast only it does not ignore cover. It is much cheaper of course at 125 points.

The Nurgle migration

La migration de Nurgle

I thought my decision to outflank all my heavy hitters to defend my base had left the majority of my force out of the game. Due to changes in the rules though, footsloggers can travel a fair distance in just one or two turns.

With no more threats from enemy outflankers, I walked my force in two waves: one towards the center objective and one towards the remaining sternguard and Mike's squad of straggler marines in the back of his zone.

He's based on my first attempt to make a scratchbuilt forgefiend. The forgefiend performed so badly that I had to do something else with the tracked body I made. The lord has turned out to be an excellent alternative.

Missile launcher abuse

L'abus des lances-missiles

The space wolves were hunkered down in their base with a bunch of Longfang missile launcher dudes.

I was happy that I didn't need to deal with these bad boys. Dokclaw sent them running over to Mike's lines. Mike met them head on with some assault marines and the assault dwindled on for several turns.

Dokclaw had to outflank his death star termie unit on the other side of the table due to bad rolling so I sent my Chosen after them in another outflanking maneuver. Only problem was that I forgot to shoot them. I effectively wasted the opportunity to hit 5 terminators in the back with no cover with five meltas.

It didn't matter much to the course of the game because his termies were too slow and arrived too late to get where they were needed.

Daemon Prince Assault

L'assaut du prince daemon

Despite all my misgivings about the changes to the daemon prince in the new Chaos codex, I still love the daemons' codex version. At 205 points, I still get a lot of bang with Wings, T6, Eternal Warrior, 3+ save, and Assault grenades (cloud of flies).

Stinky (my daemon prince) came hurtling out of the skies and chewed up the remnants of the sternguard.

After that, he took a lot of fire and almost died, but I used a token to save him. Mike had kept two squads hanging back in the rear both of which came to untimely ends, the yellow against Stinky, and the black against my lord on palanquin.

Mike had several tactical squads hanging back in his deployment zone. As the game rolled into the third or fourth turn, he began to walk them out towards the objective. They looked like migrating lemmings as they came out in long lines.

Mike's waiting game tactic worked. His end game spammer rush for the objective was so populous that neither Dokclaw or I could remove him from the objective. The end result, Mike won with two objectives to each of our single objectives.

Overall, I found the rules worked very well. The system for accumulating tokens never allowed anyone to seize a wild advantage. During our game, players gained at most two tokens a turn since no one was able to hold the center objective without it being contested.

It did make for a much longer game though. You have to be ready to accommodate a third player. The turns could be really long too. When Dokclaw succeeded in going two turns in a row, and I was after Mike, that was a very long wait.

The 3 player dynamic forces players to be careful with the balance of power as it does in 3 player Risk. Players cannot afford to ignore one player. In general we were good with maintaining the balance except I think Dokclaw and I focused too much on each other, leaving Mike much too strong in the end game. The amount of marines he had left was absurd!

Another complication was the D1 deployment zone that Mike chose. I had decided to rule that outflanking functions as it usually does in a regular game. Unfortunately that meant that Mike, being so far from any of the side table edges, gained an advantage by being almost impervious to outflanks, whereas Dokclaw and I could have units outflanking directly into our deployment zones. A possible fix for this would be to make outflankers able to arrive from any of the table edges that don't open into a deployment zone (see the dotted lines in the following photo).

Despite the length and the outflanking hiccups, I really enjoyed the game. Any veteran of the Apocalypse scene will not bat an eyelid at spending 5-6 hours on a game. Hopefully I remember the rules next time we have the dilemma of an extra player for 40k.

Thanks to Dokclaw and Mike for being sporting enough to test drive these new rules. Dokclaw has been my willing guinea pig for some time now. I personally love trying out alternative rules so that's why I keep inventing them. Here's to many more funky scenarios in the future.